Visionaries and Innovators

The early visionaries dreamed of humankind one day going into space and together with the innovators made it happen. Many of the visionaries and innovators we recognize today share an undeniable desire to make the dream a reality for anyone who wants to go.

Peter Diamandis -- Popular favorite garnering dozens of nominations from readers, Diamandis co-founded the Ansari X Prize, a $10 million purse that has inspired more than 20 teams to built reusable spacecraft in hopes of being the first to send three people into suborbital space and back twice in two weeks and to claim the prize. He also is a co-founder of International Space University.

Diamandis

Paul Coleman -- The former president of the Universities States Research Association, Coleman has been a tireless proponent of making space accessible to university researchers. In the early 1990s, Coleman served on a White House panel that urged converting surplus ballistic missiles into satellite launchers. He also has been active in working to get access to the space shuttle for university experimenters.

Bill Gaubatz and Jess Sponable -- For their work on the Delta clipper X (DC-X), later known as the Clipper Graham, an experimental single stage to orbit vehicle that never got the funding it deserved despite early flight successes. The DC-X was built under contract at McDonnell Douglas with Gaubatz serving as the project manager responsible for its design and construction. The reusable rocket repeatedly flew from the White Sands Missile Range starting in the early 1990s.

Mike Griffin -- From the number of advanced degrees Griffin has racked up over the years -- five masters and a Ph.D. (not that we are counting) -- you might conclude that Griffin is your classic ivory tower type, all theory and no practice. But that would overlook the role Griffin played in the early days of missile defense, as the NASA executive in charge of the Space Exploration Initiative, as Orbital Science’s chief technologist, the president of the CIA venture capital firm In-Q-Tel, and currently as the director of Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. Griffin has been an outspoken advocate of finding innovative and affordable ways to conduct human and robotic space missions.

John Mankins -- One of NASA’s classic big picture guys, there has hardly been an advanced concepts project and human space exploration strategic plan that hasn’t benefited from Mankins’ input. He is well known for his contributions to space solar power, and also deserves credit for creating the MagLifter electromagnetic launch assist system concept and for inventing technology readiness levels to assess a given technology’s relative maturity.

Gerard K. O’Neill -- Dozens of readers nominated O’Neill for this list, a real testament to the impact he had on so many people. No other person who lived and worked in the last 15 years was mentioned nearly as often. Although he died in the early Spring of 1992, O’Neill’s book, “The High Frontier,” continues to inspire new generations of space enthusiasts. His testimony to the U.S. Congress about such issues as solar power from space and living in artificial space habitats fueled the grass roots activists and inspired a new generation of innovators who are working to make space a reality beyond government programs. O’Neill’s descendents are determined to prove that his vision of private groups getting things done in space in a way that is truly faster, better and cheaper than the things the big bureaucracies do. Even within NASA’s large structure, O’Neill’s followers are self-organizing into work groups for specific missions that were unthinkable 15 years ago. Unthinkable, that is, for those who hadn’t spent a few minutes with O’Neill.

Rutan

Burt Rutan -- The legendary aircraft designer is blazing a trail that many hope will open the final frontier to regular visits by paying commercial customers. Rutan’s Scaled Composites is the odds on favorite to win the X Prize, a $10 million award that will go to the first privately financed organization to launch a vehicle on a suborbital trajectory twice in two weeks.

Sir Martin Sweeting -- Sweeting turned Surrey Satellite into the world’s microsatellite builder. Under his guidance this British company has trained a new generation of spacecraft builders throughout the world helping countries like Turkey, Thailand, Korea and Chile enter the space age. Surrey also was the architect of a new global disaster monitoring system of imaging satellites.

Rick Tumlinson -- Part agitator, part operator, Tumlinson has spent the past two decades advocating human exploration and settlement of the solar system and has been a strong advocate of creating commercial opportunities at the Russian Mir space station and at the international space station.

Bob Zubrin -- Zubrin’s vocation could best be described as Mars evangelist. No one is as passionate, as aggressive, as relentless and sometimes just downright annoying as Zubrin. He has made getting humans to Mars his life’s passion and he has spread that passion like a circuit preacher. Founded six years ago, the Mars Society is a thriving, vibrant organization with an active membership.

Angels

Every field has them -- angel investors who often put their personal convictions ahead of return on investment. In recent years, more than one space entrepreneur has been given a shot at turning their dreams into reality thanks to some of these fabled money men.

Paul Allen and Burt Rutan

Paul Allen -- The Microsoft co-founder made headlines this year as the financial backer behind SpaceShipOne’s successful suborbital flight, bringing affordable space travel that much closer to becoming reality. Allen also has donated millions to the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence Institute and bankrolled construction of the institute’s Allen Array Telescope, a dedicated radio astronomy telescope scanning the skies for signals from beyond. Thanks in no small part to Allen’s largesse, SETI is back in NASA’s good graces, joining the U.S. space agency’s Astrobiology Institute. Allen was also the driving force behind Seattle’s Science Fiction Museum, which opened its doors in 2004.

Walt Anderson -- Anderson is the money man behind such shoot for the stars ventures as MirCorp, the Foundation for Non-governmental Development of Space, Rotary Rocket, Constellation Services International, Satellite Media Services and LunaCorp. Many Anderson-backed space ventures have yet to leave the launch pad, and some of them probably never will. “The joke is I make money in telecom so I can [throw] it away in space,” Anderson said in 2002, announcing the start up of a new satellite servicing venture dubbed Orbital Recovery Corp. “I’m done being an angel investor for crackpot space enthusiasts. I want to be the guy who really commercializes space.”

Steve Kirsch -- The founder and former chairman of Infoseek funded construction of the Mars Society’s Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station in Canada’s Devon Island.

Walter Kistler -- The Swiss-born physicist and inventor combined his vision with his own personal wealth to start Spacehab in the 1980s and later Kistler Aerospace Corp., a Kirkland, Wash.-based firm that has spent over a half-billion dollars in pursuit of an affordable reusable launcher.

Remigius Shatas & Bob Asprey -- This Huntsville, Ala.-based duo have been a reliable source of start-up capital for such entrepreneurial efforts as Space America, SkyCorp, Constellation Services International and Rocketplane Limited.

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